英文版读后感
miss austen never attempts to describe a scene or a class of society with which she was not herself thoroughly acquainted. the conversations of ladies with ladies, or of ladies and gentlemen together, are given, but no instance occurs of a scene in which men only are present. the uniform quality of her work is one most remarkable point to be observed in it. let a volume be opened at any place: there is the same good english, the same refined style, the same simplicity and truth. there is never any deviation into the unnatural or exaggerated; and how worthy of all love and respect is the finely disciplined genius which rejects the forcible but transient modes of stimulating interest which can so easily be employed when desired, and which knows how to trust to the never-failing principles of human nature! this very trust has sometimes been made an objection to miss austen, and she has been accused of writing dull stories about ordinary people. but her supposed ordinary people are really not such very ordinary people. let anyone who is inclined to criticise on this score endeavor to construct one character from among the ordinary people of his own acquaintance that shall be capable of interesting any reader for ten minutes. it will then be found how great has been the discrimination of miss austen in the selection of her characters, and how skillful is her treatment in the management of them. it is true that the events are for the most part those of daily life, and the feelings are those connected with the usual joys and griefs of familiar existence; but these are the very events and feelings upon which the happiness or misery of most of us depends; and the field which embraces them, to the exclusion of the wonderful, the sentimental, and the historical, is surely large enough, as it certainly admits of the most profitable cultivation. in the end, too, the novel of daily real life is that of which we are least apt to weary: a round of fancy balls would tire the most vigorous admirers of variety in costume, and the return to plain clothes would be hailed with greater delight than their occasional relinquishment ever gives. miss austen"s personages are always in plain clothes, but no two suits are alike: all are worn with their appropriate differen as we should expect from such a life, jane austen"s view of the world is genial, kindly, and, we repeat, free from anything like cynicism. it is that of a clear-sighted and somewhat satirical onlooker, loving what deserves love, and amusing herself with the foibles, the self-deceptions, the affectations of humanity. refined almost to fastidiousness, she is hard upon vulgarity; not, however, on good-natured vulgarity, such as that of mrs. jennings in "sense and sensibility," but on vulgarity like that of miss steele, in the same novel, combined at once with effrontery and with meanness of soul....
jane eyre, is a poor but aspiring, small in body but huge in soul, obscure but self-respecting girl. after we close the covers of the book, after having a long journey of the spirit, jane eyre, a marvelous figure, has left us so much to recall and to think:
we remember her goodness: for someone who lost arms and blinded in eyes, for someone who despised her for her ordinariness, and even for someone who had hurt her deeply in the past.
we remember her pursuit of justice. it’s like a companion with the goodness. but still, a virtuous person should promote the goodness on one side and must check the badness on the other side.
we remember her self-respect and the clear situation on equality. in her opinion, everyone is the same at the god’s feet. though there are differences in status、in property and also in appearance, but all the human being are equal in personality.
we also remember her striving for life, her toughness and her confidence…
when we think of this girl, what she gave us was not a pretty face or a transcendent temperament that make us admire deeply, but a huge charm of her personality.
actually, she wasn’t pretty, and of course, the ordinary appearance didn’t make others feel good of her, even her own aunt felt disgusted with it. and some others even thought that she was easy to look down on and to tease, so when miss ingram met jane eyre, she seemed quite contemptuous, for that she was obviously much more prettier than ‘the plain and ugly governess’. but as the little governess had said: ‘do you think, because i am poor, obscure, plain, and little, i am soulless and heartless? you think wrong!’ this is the idea of equality in jane eyre’s mind. god hadn’t given her beauty and wealth, but instead, god gave her a kind mind and a thinking brain. her idea of equality and self-respect impress us so much and let us feel the power inside her body.
in my mind, though a person’s beauty on the face can make others once feel that one is attractive and charming, if his or her mind isn’t the same beautiful as the appearance, such as beauty cannot last for, when others find that the beauty which had charmed them was only a falsity, it’s not true, they will like the person no more. for a long time, only a person’s great virtue, a noble soul, a beautiful heart can be called as an everlasting beauty, just as kahill gibran has said, that ‘beauty is a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted’. i can feel that how beauty really is, as we are all fleshly men, so we can’t distinguish whether a man is of nobleness or humbleness, but fleshly men, so we can’t distinguish whether a man is of nobleness or humbleness, but as there are great differences in our souls, and from that, we can know that whether a man is noble or ordinary, and even obscure, that is, whether he is beautiful or not.